On the table in front of us, are spread out a few dozen celluloid film frames, clipped from their reels and encased in slides. Beyond them, toward me, are five or so little stacks that Mekas has placed the slides in after viewing them over a light box with a magnifying glass. He explains that he’s sorting all his old boxes of film stills – thematically no less – so they are more readily accessible as he makes new art. At 88, Mekas works every day to do just that. Within moments of sitting down he rattles off several projects he’s either just recently completed or that he’s on deadline to finish, ranging from a commission for the Jeu de Paume in Paris, called My Paris Movie, to an entry in the London Film Festival.
     Mekas has frequently been called the godfather of American avant-garde cinema, but he’s really the star of his own epic movie. Born in Lithuania, Mekas was displaced during World War Two and imprisoned in a German labor camp with his brother. After eight months, they escaped and spent the rest of the war hiding out on a farm near the Danish border. Four years after the war, he emigrated to the U.S. and quickly became involved in film. “Until I landed in New York I was one hundred percent in literature,” he says. “But the minute I arrived here I became completely and totally committed to film. Everything about New York, the movement, the sounds, made me want to speak in that language. And my work is about that, about the real life. About the daily and invisible activities that cannot be made in studios.”